A teenager launched a hammer attack on two sleeping pupils in the dorm of a private boarding school before trying to kill a teacher, a court heard. The now 17-year-old, who can not be named for legal reasons, launched a violent assault at the £41k a year Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, with the intent to kill, the trial heard.
Two of the victims, aged 16 and 15 at the time, were taken to hospital in life-threatening conditions and will never fully recover, the court heard. The adult victim Henry Roffe-Silvester, 38, who was a member of staff at the school and the housemaster of the dorm, was also taken to hospital and was discharged later.
The defendant, then a 16-year-old boy, was arrested at the scene after the attack just after midnight on 9 June last year. He went on trial at Exeter Crown Court today, charged with three counts of attempted murder.
Opening the case James Dawes KC, said two boys had gone to bed and the victims were fast asleep and had been since before midnight. Mr Dawes said: "The defendant decided to put into action a plan that he had been fermenting in his head for some time.
"That plan was to kill (the two boys) and he decided to do it while they slept in their own beds - and he decided to do it with a hammer. It is not known which boy he attacked first. He was in possession of four claw hammers. A heavy hammer with a flat striking side and a claw at the back and he had four of them
"He selected a hammer and he quietly climbed up onto the top of the first cabin bed. The boys were asleep and they both had heads on pillows and then he smashed the hammers into their heads as they slept. Multiple times.
"He also hit arms and backs, he didn't just use the flat end of the hammer, he used the claw as well to strike these boys. These blows smashed their skulls. it broke through the skull driving pieces of bone into the brain."
Blows to the back of one of the victims damaged his spleen, and broke a rib with its now sharp edge puncturing one of his lungs. "Blood went everywhere", Mr Dawes added.
He then approached the second victim who was also asleep and climbed up and he "smashed a hammer down onto his head multiple times as he slept", Mr Dawes told the jury. "Those blows broke his skull, driving pieces of bone into his brain and the membranes around the brain. He hit his upper arm with the hammer, claw side.
"You may think whoever does that intends to kill the person he is attacking - they were sleeping at the time. Astonishingly they both survived these attacks. Their survival is nothing to do with the defendant or his actions - but everything to do with the speed at which the 999 call was made by another boy at the school, who acted very responsibly and quickly. And the astonishing skill of the paramedics who arrived - and the skilful work of the doctors and surgeons who saved their lives at the hospital.
"However attacks like this do not happen without long-term consequences and there have been for both boys. Sadly neither of them will ever be the same again as they were prior to the attack.
"Both heads are permanently damaged and cognitive functions are not as they were. Mercifully neither has any memories of these attacks - they were both asleep. They recall going to bed and waking up in hospital some days later. However the investigation has been able to reconstruct a great deal of what happened to them - from examination of their injuries and the scene and what happened next.
"The bleeding was extensive. The scene in that room has been described by those who saw it as horrific. But he did not stop his attack, he went on to attack Mr Henry Roffe-Silvester, who had come upstairs to investigate the noise."
The trial continues.
